More jobs found through social networks?

More jobs found through social networks?

More jobs found through social networks?-Social networking is playing an increasing role in helping people find jobs, with a projected 22 million Americans finding work in the past year through their Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter contacts, according to survey released Wednesday.

That compares to the 14.4 million who found work through social networks in 2010, according to a survey commissioned by Jobvite Inc., a Burlingame social recruiting software maker.

But Facebook – the largest social network by far – may be proving more important to finding a job than LinkedIn, which bills itself as the professional social network.

One in six found work through social networking, but of those, 83 percent credited Facebook – generally regarded as a personal social networking site – for their success. That compared to 46 percent for LinkedIn and 36 percent for Twitter.

However, 31 percent of job seekers said they used all three. The study showed a large number tap into multiple social networks as well as more traditional offline networking.

“Socially savvy job seekers have an advantage over their fellow job hunters and it’s paying off,” Jobvite president and CEO Dan Finnigan said.

The effect on social networking with job recruiters and employers are clear. Another survey released earlier this year by Palo Alto social network monitoring service Reppler found that 91 percent of hiring managers and recruiters were using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to screen prospective candidates. The market for social job recruiting has been estimated at $420 billion a year and growing.

To look at what job seekers were doing, Jobvite commissioned the polling company inc./WomanTrend to survey a representative samble of 2,049 adults on Oct. 24 to 27. The total included 844 who were retired, students or unemployed people not actively seeking jobs.

The results showed that 69 percent of all Americans are looking for a new job, whether they are unemployed or are already working and looking out for the next good opportunity.

And 54 percent of those active job seekers turned to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

Also, 48 percent engaged in at least one job hunting activity – such as updating profiles and making new professional connections – on Facebook during the past year, compared to 26 percent on LinkedIn and 23 percent on Twitter.

The survey also found that people who had more than 150 contacts on any one social network were more successful finding a job.

About 37 percent of these so-called “super social” members were on Facebook, compared to 10 percent on LinkedIn. However, 43 percent of LinkedIn’s super social job seekers received a job referral, compared to 25 percent through Facebook.